


Trauma all the way down

by Shade_OKiller



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Episode Tag, Gen, Post MAG173
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24942505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shade_OKiller/pseuds/Shade_OKiller
Summary: The Eye prefers the more complex neuroses and disquiets of a fully developed mind. So the children are allowed to age – and they are placed into domains where their fears can… mature.Three children grow up and into the coping strategies of the apocalypse. See Jack run. See Kaitlyn hide. See Callum push.
Kudos: 36





	Trauma all the way down

Jack is very good at running. At one foot in front of the other and moving, moving, moving when there is something chasing you. He runs through black streets that have forgotten starlight and he runs through puberty. He gets taller first, not all at once. Limbs stretch and then he shoots up. If there were still parents in Night Street they might have commented on it, but there have not been parents on Night Street for a very long time. If the night hadn't come, maybe Jack would be in school sports. Or maybe he would never have found the urge to  _ run _ .

There is always something chasing you on Night Street, and if you forget, or think perhaps that there never was something there in the first place, then you get a visit. A visit from your very best friend.

Callum Brodie aged like pond scum. He usually keeps away, too fond of the hidden creatures that may or may not actually exist to chase any of his friends. If Callum wants to talk to you he knows how to show up from the Dark. He's a good friend to Jack, always letting Jack know what the new monsters in the Dark do. What should be done to avoid them.

Jack has been running for a very,  _ very _ , long time. He has not had to stop to eat or drink or sleep since the Dark came. It must have been a long time to grow so much, but he hasn't noticed. Hasn't noticed the strength creep into his legs, the sharpness to his movements. The aches and pains of growing up have not been a concern for the children on Night Street. There have always been other things to worry about, and if you forget Callum is ever so obliging.

And then, one day, as Jack dodges past the empty car under which lives a terrible growing creature, the strangest thought pops into his head. Why is  _ Jack _ the one running? So much has changed, especially Jack, but Jack keeps running away. He stops and the deep running breaths stop with him, you do not run out of breath on Night Street. He takes a deep breath, in through the nose and - there. There's a whiff of something sick and salty in the air. 

Jack breaths in deeper, head tilting to the right. He knows what that is, that smell of brackish water that hangs around Callum like a coat. He turns, that way is the park and the creatures that dwell there in the creaking shadows. Except Jack has run through that park many many times, and none of them have ever caught him. Those creatures must not be very fast.

Jack is very fast. Jack is faster than anyone else on Night Street. Jack is bigger and faster and stronger and sharper than everyone else on Night Street.

Jack starts to run again, but this time it's different. This time Jack has something to chase. Now Jack has something to Hunt.

* * *

The more Kaitlyn grows the better she learns to fold herself small. No, even smaller than that. You can't be too unnoticed in the Dark of Night Street, if you're too good at hiding Callum will come and set something on you. Then you have to wriggle out of the little space and find another place to hide, somewhere even smaller. For a while she calls it a game, her and one of the girls from school who did all the funny voices. Hide and Seek was such a good school game. 

Callum would tell them about the monsters that were seeking them, but they were all so  _ big _ . They could swallow Kaitlyn whole in one big gulp. But they had to find her first. And Kaitlyn was very good at hiding. 

The best places are the gaps that squeeze her tight all over, until nothing else can touch her. Until it's hard to breath. Like this Kaitlyn can squeeze her eyes shut and pretend that it's her and the little space she's in that causes the blackness, and not the Dark that's come to Night Street. For a little while she can imagine everything getting smaller, pressing into her on all sides. It's almost like a hug. Like she can't breath at all. Like she can't even move and if she just stays where she is she'll never have to move or breath ever again.

That's when Callum tells her about the stretchy sneaky monsters, the ones that reach out with spindly little hands through all the tiniest cracks to grab her and pull her up up and away. Kaitlyn hates those monsters, hates that they could creep into her best and tightest hiding spots and uproot her.

In Kaitlyn's back garden there is a garden shed, and in that garden shed there is a trowel. It was her Nan's, before Nan moved to the home and all her gardening things moved into their shed. When the Dark first came to Night Street Kaitlyn was too scared to look in the shed. Callum said there were things in there that would drag her down, down into the darkest, wettest places and leave her there where no one could hear her cry. When she goes to get the trowel nothing tries to grab her. But she knows what she has to do.

There's a gap between the shed and fence. It hardly fit her when she was little and it shouldn't fit her now, but she knows how to make herself small now. Kaitlyn shuffles into the gap and wriggles down until she can reach the moist earth. The ground parts under her fingers, and even faster with the trowel. There's nowhere to put the extra dirt, so Kaitlyn piles it on top of herself, feels that comfortable weight bearing down on her.

Callum can't fit in here, and soon she will be so deep in the ground that none of his creatures will either.

* * *

Callum Brodie knows there are things in the Dark that want to get him. He has known this since he was taken to a Dark place by a stranger, has known this since something wet and slimy poured itself over him and tried to get  _ in _ . It's still trying to get him, but he can hold it off. If he has enough time. It just needs to get everyone else first. All the kids who were too little to help him, and who laughed when he wanted the lights on. The kids that wanted to hear what happened. He hated them. They needed to know what it was like to be scared. And if they were scared in the Dark then Callum could tell them what to be scared of. This time they would listen to him. They knew he was right.

The thing in the Dark would get them all.

**Author's Note:**

> I love this entire episode BUT the tragedy of Callum is that we forgot about him, just like everyone else who was supposed to help him did. It's poor coping strategies all round.


End file.
